Gerry Armstrong Project (February 17, 1982)

Project information: Gerry Armstrong is a blown SO member who had access to a lot of sensitive information; he is now disaffected, from what we can see. He is hiding out apparently. He knows the GO has been looking into him, so he has been laying low to avoid this. So we don’t know where he is currently and he is expecting us to approach him on a covert line. So this presents the trickiest of problems. It would undoubtedly antagonize him further if any of our investigation efforts became known to him. Yet we still need to know what he is up to.

Project purpose: TO obtain a means of predicting Armstrong’s activity in such a way that there is no possibility of backflash.

Step 1) The first thing we need to do is to locate him. Those few people who know where he is probably are on the look out for GO inquiries. However, he is going to have to get a job soon to earn a living, by law he must notify the DMV when he moves – he might do this, and there are other things like that which can be checked and which may give us his location once he starts operating in the wog world again. These can be checked once we get his birthday and social security number. These should be available from his personnel records and his treasury records. SO the steps would be: a) Telex Flag and SU to locate his personnel file and to get his
ss number from payroll records. b) Use this data to check DMV, the post office, or any other source to locate him in a way that he would not be aware of it.

Step 2) Go through his files and folders to extract the names of people who knew him and who are still well connected up and completely trustworthy. Interview these people to find out who Gerry’s close friends were and to see if he had any relatives in this area (we could then follow up to see if he might be staying with them).

Step 3) Determine which locations would be likely places that Gerry might be staying, assuming that he would be staying with friends or relatives. Check these out, either by physical surveillance or other means, to determine if he’s there.

Step 4) Note that Gerry had tried to get OVG[. OVG: Omar Garrison] to hire him as a researcher after he blew. It could be that he gave a PT2 address to OVG. This should be checked out by going through the proper people who have a line to OVG to see if this can be done or if he has it.

Step 5) Conditional: If GA has not been located at this point by doing the above steps, then review what has been done and work out further actions that could be done to locate him.

Step 6) Once he is located, determine where he is currently working. This may entail following him to see where he works.

Step 7) Once it is established where he works, see what opportunities might exist there for setting up an inquiry line from an apparent “wog” angle. He might not be expecting that at all.

Step 8) Review his files for people who had a good commline with him and who are no longer on staff, and who would be trustworthy.

Step 9) Once the list of candidates has been selected from step 8 above, do a complete check on these people (discreetly) to see what their current status, demeanor, attitude, etc., are as regards their potential willingness to help us on this cycle.

Step 10) Using standard and discreet recruitment tech, interview the trustworthy candidates to see if they can be used as a resource.

-more-

Step 11) Arrange a suitable cover story and other standard procedures, such as a plausible reason for the resource to be contacting GA, etc.

Step 12) Initiate the commline and procede from there, on that line.

Step 13) Have a PT investigation done on Scott Brown in Phoenix, Arizona.3 He was running a squirrel group there and may have some sort of group going that could be entered by a public person. This needs to be checked out either via LV GO, or simply by sending a GLA resource to Phoenix for a day or two.

Step 14) Conditional: If it looks like an entrance point can be arranged through Scott Brown in Phoenix, this will have to be separately targetted out and persued. Perhaps we could get someone connected up to him in Phoenix who then moves to LA and connects up with the Brown family or Gerry here. That might be sufficiently subtle; GA might not suspect someone from Phoenix as he knows we don’t have a GO there.

Step 15) Persue the potential existing line that might be available to us via a trusted GAS who is a writer and who is respected by Gerry. This would require some reach from Gerry, though, as he might be suspicious if this GAS made a big reach for him.

Step 16) If the product has not been achieved at this point, review the steps taken so far and debug or replan as needed.